Naomi Klein Finally “Gets It”

by Scott Creighton

Naomi Klein has been running around for the longest time supporting the events in Copenhagen like they were a real effort to save the world or something.  I figured she had completely sold out or was so high on her own rhetoric, she couldn’t see the forest for the trees (little pun there). 

Well, one of the most vocal and coherent anti-globalization and anti-neoliberal Friedman economic reform advocates has finally ”woken up”.

The woman who literally wrote the book exposing how these globalist monsters have been using their “free-market” reforms to loot nations all across the world for decades, has finally realized the Global Warming Crisis is being used as a massive, world-wide “disaster capitalist” ploy to empower the World Bank and the IMF to do the exact same thing to EVERY poor nation, at will, in whatever sequence they so desire, and all under the ruse of the very same “disaster”… Global Warming.

You know, I just blogged about this, and the headline I put on is “Climate Structural Adjustment,” because this is what the International Monetary Fund was so famous for doing. You need help? Your country is collapsing? Here’s our list of demands: privatize your water, lay off your people. But this is on a massive, massive scale. So, yeah, I would call it blackmail. And I think that, unfortunately, countries are so desperate for aid that they may well accept this terrible deal. And that’s—those are the stakes here.  Klein

Not only has she made these statements on her website and on Democracy Now, but she and HUNDREDS of others at the conference in Copenhagen, got up and walked out to join the protesters outside. Imagine that.

Klein said that it was “the world upside down” at these talks. Serious activists whom have devoted years to this issue, being refused entry to the Bella Center (where the conference is taking place) while oil company executives are walking around freely through out the entire process and attending the “green room” private meetings with political leaders from around the world.  Activists are being arrested outside the talks who have done nothing wrong, but according to the other interviewee, a new Danish law allows for the police to arrest someone PRIOR to them doing anything as long as the police have reason to believe they MIGHT interfere with the conference. Kind of like the “pre-crime” laws Obama bandied about a couple months back.

And, you know, it comes down in the end to these power plays of using aid really as a weapon. And we saw that this morning with Hillary Clinton.  Naomi Klein

Welcome back to the fight, Naomi. We missed you.  If you have a few moments Naomi, read this. It’s All About Globalization, Stupid. WTFU

Keith O Gets Feisty… Finally

Most of you here know that I am not much of a Olbermann fan, haven’t been for a while. The man made his career literally off the corpse of Phil Donahues show when Phil had the bad taste to put people on his show that claimed there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction prior to the illegal invasion of Iraq… then along came Olberman who dutifully ran with a plethora of retired generals and military advisors hyping the war.

But, that said, Mr. Olberman finally took a stand the other night, and it is worth mentioning. He said this healthcare reform bill is nothing of the sort, and it is pretty much a mandate to purchase “protection money” from mobsters.  And he is right.  But then he went even further, said something that I have been thinking about writing and saying for sometime now… as a matter of fact, I did write it in August of this year; he said the president can pretty much consider him a criminal right now because he won’t, under and circumstances, buy insurance under this mandate. 

Now, he does kinda let Obama off the hook a bit, acting as if Obama is being “forced” into this, rather than pointing out like Greenwald does so well that Obama isn’t the victim in all this, he’s actually the perp… but, at least Keith O is finally taking a real stand. We will see how long it lasts.

 

“I call on all those whose conscious urges them to fight to use the only weapon let too us if this if this bill as currently constituted becomes law.

We Must Not Buy Federally Mandated Insurance if this cheesy counterfeit of reform is all we can buy.

No Single Payer… no sale.

No Public Option… no sale.

No Medicare Buy-In… no sale.

I am one of the self insured, albeit by choice, and I herby pledge that I will not buy this perversion of healthcare reform.

Pass this bill at your peril senators and sign it at your’s Mr. President.

I will not buy this insurance. Brand me a law-breaker if you chose. Fine me if you will, jail me if you must. But if the Medicare buy in goes and the mandate stays, the people who fought so hard and so sincerely to bring sanity to this system must kill this mutated ugly version of their dream because those elected by us, to act for us, have forgotten what must be the golden rule of healthcare reform. It is the same rule to which physicians are bound by oath:

First; Do No Harm.”

***UPDATE*** Looks like Ed Schultz is getting into the act as well… he says the base thinks Obama is nothing more than a sellout, and had a guest on from the insurance industry who said the senate version of the bill has a series of loop-holes in it that the insurance companies actually dictated to members of the senate.  He also points out that as Obama was making his recent fear mongering speech about supporting the Lieberman plan, Max Baccus was standing right by his side. Baccus, as Ed points out, has taken the MOST money from the healthcare/insurance giants, something to the tune of 1500 dollars… per day.

Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald: Current Health Reform Bill Does More Harm Than Good

Progressive senator Jay Rockefeller, said the following ” I didn’t get some things I wanted. So What? So what. Theres a whole lot of things in there I have been dreaming about for years and years…”

That’s a Rockefeller saying that, by the way…

The interviewer, David Shyster (heehee) tried to stick to the company line by suggesting that “the left” would eventually see all the wonderful stuff in the bill and get on board, or that they were just “angry young men” ready to be mad at the president no matter what he did.  Glen took care of that line of propaganda rather quickly. 

“I don’t think this has anything to do with “anger” or anything that Jay Rockefeller just said. I think the argument of why the bill should be defeated as Dr. Dean is expressing and others is not that “well because we didn’t get everything we wanted, sink the bill”. That’s not it. The argument is much more substantive than that. The argument is that this bill does more harm than good from the perspective of healthcare policy and how our government works. Essentially it requires by force of law, 10s of millions of people who don’t want to be customers of the private insurance industry to become customers of that industry. To write out HUGE checks to Aetna and Blue Cross, while at the same time providing no competition with those corporations, no means of keeping costs under control.  And all of the promises that were allegedly made, all the great virtues of the bill, like eliminating the insurance industries payout caps, or keeping the insurance company from claiming fraud when it comes time that you actually get sick and they try and not cover you, those things aren’t actually in the senate bill. I think what this bill does more than anything else is that it massively increases the profitability of the insurance industry while providing very little benefit and bolstering many of the systemic problems…”  Greenwald

White House as helpless victim on healthcare

by Glen Greenwald, Salon

Of all the posts I wrote this year, the one that produced the most vociferous email backlash — easily — was this one from August, which examined substantial evidence showing that, contrary to Obama’s occasional public statements in support of a public option, the White House clearly intended from the start that the final health care reform bill would contain no such provision and was actively and privately participating in efforts to shape a final bill without it.  From the start, assuaging the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries was a central preoccupation of the White House — hence the deal negotiated in strict secrecy with Pharma to ban bulk price negotiations and drug reimportation, a blatant violation of both Obama’s campaign positions on those issues and his promise to conduct all negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN).  Indeed, Democrats led the way yesterday in killing drug re-importation, which they endlessly claimed to support back when they couldn’t pass it.  The administration wants not only to prevent industry money from funding an anti-health-care-reform campaign, but also wants to ensure that the Democratic Party — rather than the GOP – will continue to be the prime recipient of industry largesse. 

As was painfully predictable all along, the final bill will not have any form of public option, nor will it include the wildly popular expansion of Medicare coverage.  Obama supporters are eager to depict the White House as nothing more than a helpless victim in all of this — the President so deeply wanted a more progressive bill but was sadly thwarted in his noble efforts by those inhumane, corrupt Congressional “centrists.”  Right.  The evidence was overwhelming from the start that the White House was not only indifferent, but opposed, to the provisions most important to progressives.  The administration is getting the bill which they, more or less, wanted from the start — the one that is a huge boon to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry.   And kudos to Russ Feingold for saying so: 

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, said it would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise. Feingold said that responsibility ultimately rests with President Barack Obama and he could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation. 

“This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth,” said Feingold. “I think they could have been higher. I certainly think a stronger bill would have been better in every respect.” 

 

Howard Dean: Health Care Bill ‘Bigger Bailout for the Insurance Industry Than AIG’

President Obama is finally happy with the healthcare bill “compromise”.  1. mandatory healthcare coverage being forced on people, by rule of law, while we are in the middle of a recession. 2. no public option 3. early Medicare buy-in for people at age 55 is GONE 4. insurance company yearly payout limits 5. national plan will supercede any state level laws 6. negotiations were NOT held in the open on CSPAN as he had promised, they were held with representatives of the insurance companies and BIG PHARMA behind the closed doors of OUR White House with proponents of Single Payer healthcare simply not invited 7. there will be no price reduction negotiations with the pharmaceutical industry and we will NOT be allowed to buy the same medicine overseas for less than half the costs we are forced to pay here.

THIS is your healthcare bill victory ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy.

President Obama said he likes the Senate health care compromise and wants it passed by Christmas, but he faces a revolt from liberals who say the health care bill has been gutted to appease insurance companies.

“This is a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG,” former Democratic National Committee chairman and medical doctor Howard Dean told “Good Morning America’s” George Stephanopoulos today. “A very small number of people are going to get any insurance at all, until 2014, if the bill works.”

“This is an insurance companies’ dream, this bill,” Dean added. “This is the Washington scramble and I think it’s ill-advised.”  ABC News

The very LAST rallying cry the Obamaites still have is that this bill will “cover millions of Americans” and that in itself makes it worthwhile.  They don’t mention that the “coverage” of these millions of Americans is a forced purchase of insurance from for-profit insurance coverage. Somehow, making people buy healthcare coverage under threat of penalty has become a “progressive” action in America. Even still, there will still be millions of Americans without insurance. The only difference for them will be that they will be treated even worse by healthcare providers after the passage of this bill.

Superpower

“We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective–a new world order–can emerge: a new era–freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony.”  George H.W. Bush, speaking before joint session in Congress, Sept. 11th, 1990

“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nation will accept the New World Order.”
– David Rockefeller speaking at a UN Business Conference, Sept. 14, 1994

Part 1 of 12 (after the first part, the rest are offered up as links on-screen)

“Superpower: Far from a conspiracy film about the dangers of government secrets and regime change, this well-balanced film straddles the philosophical divide and allows viewers to understand the US quest for global dominance through economic and military strategy that is exposed through review of historical events, personal interviews, and analysis of US foreign policy.

The heart of Superpower lies in the analysis produced from a re-examination of history through a series of interviews with historians, documentarians, and academians such as Bill Blum, Chalmers Johnson, Michel Chossudovsky, and Noam Chomsky, and others with expertise in this subject such as the Executive Producer of The Unit, Command Sergeant (Ret.) Eric Haney; former Chief Economist for the US Department of Labor, Morgan Reynolds; three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Kathy Kelly; and Lt. Col. (Ret) Karen Kwiatkowski. Examining key moments in America’s history elicits a more consistent and plausible set of motives for US foreign policy actions guided by global expansion and military dominance, rather than the hyperbolic calls for democracy and totalitarian regime change that we have become so accustomed to hearing.

Should citizens trust that their government will keep them safe, a government that keeps secrets, and lies, in the name of national security? Does the simple act of withholding information lead to a world of eroding civil liberties and corruption? Superpower presents a view of US foreign policy, which lies in stark contrast to that depicted by corporate media, popular pundits, and US heads of state. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has emerged as the preeminent superpower of the world. Superpower illustrates how the United States has chosen to leverage that position to pursue a grand strategy which will ensure itself unilateral world domination through absolute economic and military superiority. It shows a consistent pattern of government deception.”

Paul Craig Roberts on Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Welcome to Gitmo North

(The closing of Gitmo is even less than a meaningless gesture if they are going to be treating the detainees just the same on U.S. soil; it becomes the first step in the Gitmozation of the entire US prison system. Not only that, but the Obama administration is arguing that they won’t allow trials unless they know before hand that they will win the trial, which makes them “show trials” not justice. Some of these people will have no trials and some won’t even be officially charged with a crime and detained indefinitely, right on U.S. soil.)

by Glen Greenwald, Salon

The Obama administration announced today that it will create a new “supermax” facility in Thomson, Illinois, and will transfer to it many of the detainees currently held at Guantanamo.  Critically, none of those moved to Thompson will receive a trial in a real American court, and some will not be charged with any crime at all.  The detainees who will be given trials won’t go to Thomson; they’ll be moved directly to the jurisdiction where they’ll be tried.  The ones moved to Thomson will either (a) be put before a military commission or (b) held indefinitely without charges of any kind.  In other words, they’ll have exactly the same rights — or lack thereof — as they have now at Guantanamo.

William Lynn, Obama’s Deputy Defense Secretary, sent a letter today (.pdf) to GOP Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, answering multiple questions Kirk had posed, and made clear that all Thomson detainees will either have military commissions or indefinite detention without charges; none will get real trials (click images to enlarge):

The administration has already announced that it will rely on the Bush/Cheney theory to justify its indefinite detention power — that Congress implicitly authorized that when it enacted the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force.  But because Congress has banned the transfer of any Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for any reason other than to be tried in a court, the administration will now seek express legal authority to transfer detainees inside the U.S. to hold them without charges indefinitely. Former White House Counsel Greg Craig said back in February that it’s “hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law.”  One no longer needs to “imagine” it; it’s soon to come.

Democracy in the New Iraq Equals Death and Repression

(The Brussels Tribunal is reporting that up to 900 prisoners held in Iraqi detention centers are scheduled to be executed. Their report details a picture of a decaying Iraq, quite the opposite from the rosy picture of “post surge” success that both the past and current regimes in Washington would have us believe. The tribunal’s picture is one of a callous and malicious neoliberal dictatorship allowed to run rampant over any and all opposition, completely unchecked, unregulated, and unreported.  Opposition leaders being executed, assassinated, or arrested; “insurgents” being whisked away in the night by Iraqi police or by the CIA/Blackwater death squads. The social safety net, even in place under Saddam’s rule, is now gone. It’s been hacked up and sold off to private corporations and international banks.  Massive numbers of people are arrested “by mistake” and held for years in undisclosed locations, while some are arrested and the police themselves charge a ransom from their families to ensure their release. It is the lawless, criminal restructuring of the entire Iraqi socioeconomic infrastructure and it is being upheld by our current president as the successful model we have to emulate in Afghanistan.

In 1973, the first of these “free market” reform models was tested in Chile.  Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon assassinated the elected president and installed a ruthless dictator, Augusto Pinochet, to oversee the implementation of their economic “reforms”.  It was an “experiment” as they put it, but due to public pressure and the concern that it would not be widely accepted by the American people, Kissinger had to support Pinochet through covert means and back-door channels.  So it was left to Pinochet with minimal U.S. support, to suppress the inevitable public dissent of his own people and he carved out a name for himself as one of the most ruthless dictators in modern history. But before word leaked out of what Pinochet was doing in order to maintain control in the face of the draconian “reforms”, the heavily corporate controlled press here in the U.S. refered to Chile’s economic “transformation” as “The Miracle of Chile”.

Now, armed with the ambiguous justification of the ”Global War of Terror” and aided by a puppet president with a hollow Peace Prize decoration hanging from his neck like a prop hamburger in a McDonalds commercial, Iraq and Afghanistan’s hand-picked dictators no longer have to worry about using their own death squads to silence those who would speak out for humanity’s sake; they have our troops and Dwain Deet’s monstrous Predator drones to do it for them. The press and Obama’s administration have gone almost so far as to classify the remaking of Iraq as “The Miracle of Iraq” and they are surely going to speak of Afghanistan in the same rhetorical propaganda in the next year or so as long as the truth is successfully suppressed.)

 “I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.“  Harold Pinter, honorary member of the BRussells Tribunal – Nobel Lecture - 07 Dec 2005 (+24 Dec 2008)

from Global Research

The machine of repression and death in Iraq continues unabated. The Presidential Council of Iraq has reportedly ratified the death sentences of some 900 detainees who languish on death row. Some 17 of them are confirmed to be women.
 
None of the condemned had a fair trial. The Iraqi judicial system has been deemed corrupt, fundamentally dysfunctional and plagued with sectarianism by responsible international agencies and all major human rights organisations. Hundreds of lawyers have been assassinated since 2003. The Association of Iraqi Lawyers has publicly declared that it cannot reach the detainees.
 
In a bid to eliminate its political opponents, further terrorise the Iraqi people, ostensibly into submission, and to be casted the “tough leader” the US pretends it is currently seeking for Iraq, Nouri Al-Maliki has pledged to carry out these executions ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled in March of 2010.
 
Iraq already has one of the highest rates of executions in the world. On a single day in June, 19 people were hanged in Baghdad. Without global action, 900 people will be hanged imminently.
 
A culture of terror and detention

Terror through mass detention, torture and abuse is one of the trademarks of the US occupation and Maliki. In addition to mass killing, mass forced displacement, the contamination of Iraqi soil, the destruction of all public infrastructure and means of survival, tens of thousands of Iraqis are arbitrarily detained in both official and ghost facilities all over Iraq.

Chris Hedges: “We Live in a Time of Radical Evil!”

“I must confess that I am deeply disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the negroes great stumbling block in his strive toward freedom is not the white citizens council or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than he is to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you and the goal you seek but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the time-table for another man’s freedom; shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.  Luke warm acceptance, this failure to act, is the worst form of moral cowardice.  It cripples and destroys.” Letters from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. M. L. King